Having recently, for the first time ever, seen both Hostel and Cabin Fever in close succession I an now state definitively that I prefer Hostel. And it's not even very close (though Cabin Fever is still good!).
Hostel is, in essence, a remake of the previous Cabin Fever. Hostel is actually on my list of 25 movies to write about, so I won't concern myself too much with their differences and similarities here (it's more relevant to do it later), but suffice to say I think the cleaning up and honing done to the films' shared themese makes Hostel the far sharper, more acidic picture.
Cabin Fever is not without strengths, of course. As a precursor it does a very able job of setting up the ideas Roth will eventually come close to knocking out of the park with the follow-up. But, unlike many times in filmmaking history, the revelations of the latter film do not serve to make the former irrelevant. Two sequences in specific are so haunting they make me (literally, seriously, completely) shudder every time I think about them. Combining body horror with acute psychological observation in a way that, to be hyperbolic, is actually kinda mind-blowing. The first works to undermine the film's only semi-likable male protagonist. He climbs into bed with a girl he's been harboring a not-so-secret crush on for years. She never speaks and somehow, obliviously, he mistakes her feverish discomfort for sexual pleasure. The scene is shown from his point of view, so that the audience is fooled just as he is, making us complicit when Roth pulls the carpet out from under it. Like Hostel would later, Roth here shows his excellence in exposing male movie archtypes for their self-involved sense of entitlement. Because he was enjoying what he was doing to her, he naturally assumed she must be enjoying it too (especially because she didn't tell him to stop). Of all the things I was expecting from the movie, a treatise on sexual consent was not one of them.
The other scene comes later, after things have gone so wrong that nearly everyone has forgotten what it was to be right. Its place within the film is important, structurally, as it wouldn't have quite the impact had it come earlier. A girl, infected with the horrible illness the movie revolves around, shaves her legs. Unlike many horror films, in which the gore is a means to an end, Roth uses blood and effects intelligently, communicating layers of ideas beneath the superficial. Here he suggests an obstinate desire to achieve some shred of normalcy while everything descends into a horrific nightmare. The film sympathizes with her anguish, even as she is partially responsible for her place in the situation. Roth's ability to straddle the line between villifying and sympathizing with his characters is what distinguishes him as a horror auteur. At least, in his first two films. I remember Hostel II being awful.
Another aspect that sets Cabin Fever apart as more than just a practice run is the notion of leadership in a crisis. The film posits a depressing, but mostly pretty believable, idea that leadership has more to do with assertiveness than with any strong moral compass. Throughout the film Bert, who speaks most vocally, ends up swaying the more morally conflicted characters into things they mostly believe they shouldn't be doing. Thus the film introduces both the ideas of people's ability to rationalize doing terrible things in a crisis, along with their inability to stand up to the strongest voice, even when it is obviously motivated only by self-interest.
Where the film falls short, though, is in its depiction of the locals. Both Hostel and Cabin Fever are built around two sets of people: the main characters and everyone else. Hostel gains some of its success by not making it clear which is which at several points, while Cabin Fever keeps the line between the two always distinct. Both films, perhaps by necessity of their structure, are guilty of drawing upon uncomfortable aspects of the so-called Others, yet Cabin Fever fails harder by awkwardly alternating between jeering and understanding. Sometimes it's parodying the xenophobia of Deliverance and sometimes it just is Deliverance. This weaving back and forth is handled far less elegantly than it is with the main characters, making the film stumble and labor when it should be chugging smoothly. The budgetary constraints, too, as well as Roth's own inexperience, hinder the film as well. Much of the worst parts of the film are built on a kind of horror movie referentialism, expending energy to recall some of Roth's favorite films without properly tying those moments to the themes and narrative of the movie itself. The score, too, is terrible -- heavy-handed and distracting, pounding the viewer with an unnecessary aural assault.
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